U.S., China vow to stabilize relations during high-stakes meeting in Beijing
Global News
There was little indication that either is prepared to bend from its positions on issues ranging from trade, to Taiwan, to human rights conditions in China and Hong Kong.
The United States and China have pledged to stabilize their badly deteriorated ties during a critical visit to Beijing by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met Monday with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
It remains to be seen whether the two countries can resolve their most important disagreements, many of which have international financial, security and stability implications.
The two sides expressed a willingness to keep talking, but there was little indication that either is prepared to bend from its positions on issues ranging from trade, to Taiwan, to human rights conditions in China and Hong Kong, to Chinese military assertiveness in the South China Sea, to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
At the meeting with Blinken, Xi pronounced himself pleased with the outcome of Blinken’s earlier meetings with two top Chinese diplomats, and said the two countries had agreed to resume a program of understandings that he and President Joe Biden agreed to at a meeting in Bali last year.
“The Chinese side has made our decision clear, and the two sides have agreed to follow through the common understandings President Biden and I had reached in Bali,” Xi said.
That agenda had been thrown into jeopardy in recent months, notably after the U.S. shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon over its airspace in February, and amid escalated military activity in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea. Combined with disputes over human rights, trade and opiate production, the list of problem areas is daunting.
But Xi suggested the worst could be over.
“The two sides have also made progress and reached agreement on some specific issues,” Xi said without elaborating, according to a transcript of the remarks released by the State Department. “This is very good.”